My asawa and I recently visited the “Queen City of the South” and visited the new SM Seaside Cebu. It was an amazing adventure in shopping. This Super Mall, the 3rd largest mall in the Philippines and 8th largest in the world, opened last November. Though all the retail outlets are not open yet, over 250 out of 447 stores are in operation, making it a tourist destination I highly recommend.
This is the first in a series regarding our visit to this super mall in the Philippines. It only cost us 100 pesos to reach the destination, SRP, South Road Properties, as it was referred to by our cab driver, from our room at the Travel Bee Business Inn.
The SM Seaside City Cebu is a circular-shaped retail mall with multiple anchors, including a two-story The SM Store, SM Supermarket, a Centerstage theater, a Large Screen cinema, two Director’s Club cinemas, and 4 regular cinemas, an 18-lane SM Bowling and Amusement Center, and a food court flanking an Olympic-size ice skating rink (Source: Wikipedia.) 
You can reach SM Seaside by using the Cebu MyBus service as currently no jeepneys, only taxis and the MyBus, are allowed on the property. The MyBus, a hybrid, European-made Vovlo, has four different routes and run from 8am to 11pm daily. You have to purchase a e-Plus card for 200 pesos before you can avail of the service and each ride will cost you 25 pesos. The bus drivers will not accept cash so if you plan to use the e-Plus card it needs to be reloaded if you plan an extended stay in Cebu.
We used the taxi as it was more convenient for us. If you need to catch a cab at night I wouldn’t recommend standing in line at the extremely long taxi lane. My wife and I walked outside the Mountain Wing Exit where a security guard approached me, trying to wave me off the road.
I was on the MyBus path, but I ignored the guard, who didn’t pull his gun on me, and walked over to another area outside of the mall and flagged down a taxi. Trying to catch a taxi in SM Cebu City at night, the “old” SM or the new outlet we visited, is extremely difficult.
We waited in the taxi lane at SM Cebu City one Saturday night for over 30 minutes and the line barely budged. I took matters into my own hands and walked off the property and caught a taxi passing by in a matter of minutes. And yes, the cab driver went “on meter.”
The outside of the new SM Seaside is unique. Check out the photos I took with my lovely asawa standing outside of the huge shopping mall. It resembles a ship! We were impressed.The mall was designed by Arquitectonica, the same outfit which designed SM City North EDSA, SM Mall of Asia and SM Megamall.
I took the next shot outside one of the many stunning views the mall offered, such as the port area shown below.
A beautiful mountain vista is depicted in the next photograph taken outside the Sky Hall section of the mall. My spouse loved the plants and flowers planted in the gardens which even had a sprinkler system, something which I have rarely seen in the Philippines in the almost seven years I have lived here.
I loved this huge metallic sculpture standing sentry over the nearby seas.
Here’s my lovely asawa again, posing for another picture with an amazing view behind her.
My wife insisted on taking my picture at this spot, too. My apologies to anyone who might be eating breakfast, lunch or dinner while reading this blog.
More posts regarding our amazing adventures at the SM Seaside Mall and our trip to Bohol and the Chocolate Hills are coming up!
Well to be honest Dave, I always wondered what your very pretty wife ever saw in you…but now I sorta see it. You are actually fairly handsome.
Joke lang! LOL.
That mall looks amazing from the outside! Can’t wait to see if you have some pics from the inside, which I am sure you do.
The malls in the Philippines are really amazing. HUGE! If this mall is anything along the lines of the Mall of Asia of SM Mega Mall it has to be pretty impressive.
Oh, and calling you handsome was not the joke. You actually are. Age has treated you will, or is the San Miguel?
Hi Dave, great looking mall would rival any of Manila malls including SM Megamall
And Trinoma , it’s good to see any new mall just to get out of the heat really hot in
Manila right now, I bet the restaurants were very good in Cebu always love to try
Different foods when we travel sometimes I get a little bit bored to much time on my
Hands not like back home where I just worked and slept, but I’m trying new things
She’s even got me gardening lol, I’m still learning how to use the computer I’ll get
There one day, Derek in pasig.
Dave,
Look’s like a nice mall that competes with MOA, Megamall and Robinson’s Manila. Nice to be back home after being in the hospital for 3 day’s to get my Gallbladder removed. Can’t complain about the care i received, but when it came time to be discharged, that’s when the problems started.
Dave,
Yea, it took us 6 hours to get discharged. We have Philhealth and Blue Cross so the whole bill was supposed to be fully covered. They forgot to add some medication on the bill and 30,000p charge for the surgeon before submitting the bill to Philhealth and Blue Cross. After we were cleared to get discharged. As we were ready to leave they came and told us about these new fees. We were not happy asked them why they were not on the original bill submitted to the insurance companies. Of course they had no answer. They notified Blue Cross about the add on charges and they weren’t going to cover them and Anne went off the deep end. The policy covers 1.4m pesos for doctors fees. She told them if they did not pay them she was going to sue them and they changed there tune. I had no problem with the care there. We were in a suite for 4500p a day for 3 days, which insurance pays up to 13000p per day, the surgeon was very good. The incision was maybe a half an inch, very little pain. The nurses were all great. My Gastrologist was the president of the hospital and used to have a practice in the US. They would not let us leave until it was fully paid. The bill was 171,000p. Philhealth paid 25%.
Dave,
I am already moving around pretty good. The worst part is not the incision, but the area around it as they had to stretch the incison as it was very small, so they could remove the gallbladder which was inflamed and 2 gallstones. I was having a lot of acid and decided to get it checked out. They did an ultrasound and found the gallstones and decided to get it done before our trip to the US. Should be ready to go by the 21st of May.
The mall seems to be the perfect place for my wife to tell me how much she loves me right before she buys some more clothes… Hahaha LOL…
And looking foward to seeing the inside pictures of the mall. Especially you on those ice skates……
They had just started that 2 years ago when we were there, our friends had read it was going to be mall, but they knew nothing of the specifics or knew it was going to be so big and nice, hope to visit it next year.
Dave, I dont know Papa Duck but could you ask him, if he is retired military or not. I want to try to get some kind of medical insurance once we move there, but I am not military, so dont know what kinds of GOOD insurance is available there other than Philhealth, would like to find something that covers what Philhealth doesn’t pay . Only looking for insurance that covers hospital stays and prescribed drugs would be nice also since medicine is ridiculously expensive there it seems.
Bill S. and Mike,
The policy i have through Blue Cross is worth 20 million pesos or $500,000.00 per year. But it is based on your age. There office is in Makati City. The policy covers everything 100% inpatient and emergency room, but no outpatient or regular dr visits or medication unless you receive the medication while confined to the hospital. This is the first time we have used this policy in the 2 years we’ve had it. But it left a bad taste in my mouth from them refusing to pay a part of it, especially since we have never used it and it covered 1.4 mil pesos for doctors fees. Don’t know if we will renew that policy again or even if they would even want to renew us lol. There is a Insurance Broker called Omnibroker that sells health insurance with 20 different companies. It is located in Pasig City, but i believe you can contact them on line or call them. I think we will go though them next year. Since Philhealth does not cover much i thought it was best to have a supplement to cover the rest in case of a major medical problem. My didn’t think i needed one, but it paid for itself in one visit.
PapaDuck,
Thank you VERY MUCH for your assistance in replying to my question. I hope your feeling better by now and will be fully recovered by the time you go back to the US of A. I am 58 now and in reasonably good health I think, but was told just last week I may have to get surgery on my right Achilles tendon because of a build up of calcium under it that needs to be ground off the bone. Its not that bad but causes some pain the more I walk, we will be moving there if all goes well sometime in Nov. and I have thought about having it done here, but Dr. says it will be about a 3 month period to fully recover so with the move coming up, and it not hurting all that bad most of the time I am going to try to wait I think. I know there would be a waiting period if I get insurance there but I have checked and its not all that expensive to have it done there even if I have to pay for it. We will be in Davao, at least when we first move there so will if we can locate Omnibroker or someone that represents multiple companies. I just have a hard time locating things like that there since there is no phonebooks and for some reason so many companies and people there dont advertise much on the internet like they do here in the US. I have read that Philhealth covers about 50% from some people then others say they dont cover much at all, so a person does not know I guess til they see the actual bill.
Thanks again PapaDuck, and you too Dave!!!!
Thanks Dave, I dont always get online daily so sometimes it takes me a day or two to reply, but really appreciate PapaDucks help also.
Totally off topic Dave. Do you still use your magicjack for calling the US. People I talk to on a regular basis I use Viber or some other app similar to that, but I know I will need to make calls from time to time from there and was wandering if I should activate a number from the US before moving there, or maybe there are other ways to make calls from there to US I dont know about. Our speeds are often quite slow there in Davao and didnt know if that would affect the reliability of using a Magicjack.
Thanks as always!
Viber works pretty good in most instances, except for free calls the other person also has to be on viber, but I can also make pay calls to anyone but sometimes the sigal quality there prevents me from doing anything using the internet or VOIP. Was jsut wandering if Magic Jack worked any better but doubt it does since its also VOIP. I will keep a couple US credit cards I think, so I can buy things online there and have a friend send them to me in a Balik Bayan box, and also to try to keep a credit rating here in US in case we ever move back here.
Forgot, even if the house dosent sell, I have decided to go on and move there probably in Nov.. I will have a couple friends take care of the house and just pray it sells soon. Its kinda big and has 50 acres and a 6,000 sq. ft. building with it also, so it takes time to find someone looking for all that, unfortunatly. At least I sold the commercial land and the shop earlier.
Dave,
You are a brave man. We drove by the mall on our way to visit our sister-in-law in Talisay. I do not believe I have ever seen a mall of that size. Luckily there were only a few stores open at Christmas time so it was not too much of an attraction. I was very grateful for the new road that went along the sea. Much less traffic than the old route through town. Cebu traffic can be a real test of a mans patients.If I make there some day I hope they have a coffee shop for husbands to sit and watch the beautiful ladies walk by. Wandering around a mall of that size seems exhausting. I too am interested in the different insurance options in the PI after reading Papa Ducks response. Do you have any insight into this?
Cebu,often called “the little manila” is so progressive and the traffic is so relentless,I didnt know theres a huge SM already there other than the SM city & the ayala.Still prefer the laid back cities like Iloilo,guimaras and bacolod right dave?
Good day.I am Joe from Canada(The Great White North)and am thinking of retiring in Phillipines.My wife is from there.Could we have a discussion of good health insurance companies?Phil Health covers some thing,but not surgery,if I understand correctly.Great articles,by the way,and I love your book.Another by the way,it is May here,and still freezing…snow two weeks ago.After almost 60 years of snow,I have had ENUF!!!Thanks,Joe.
Thanks for the reply.I bought your latest,2016, from Amazon.Some parts are very funny,especially your comments about the “carefree” attitude toward keeping appointments.I have been to Philippines twice,and I don’t for the life of me understand how anything gets done.Somehow things sorta,kinda,get done,and everything works…sometimes.Thanks again,Joe..